Vittorio Angelone: Who Do You Think You Are? I Am!

Whatever else Vittorio Angelone might be, and debate rages in the WhatsApp groups of fellow comics and inside his troubled mind, he's a rascal. Somehow, he's managed to follow up an award-nominated debut about his identity with an hour about not really knowing his identity. Maddeningly, amusingly inconsistent, he's a London-based Irishman who makes few concessions to the adopted country he insults as easily as breathing. That's he's cheerfully part of the anyone-but-England football supporting crowd is unsurprising. But what's trickier to pin down is his plastic lasagne following of Italy. Granted, he's got the ancestral lineage, despite not speaking a word of Italian, and they're a team not unfamiliar with success, as evidenced by their triumph over the perpetually deluded English in the 2021 Euros final. But attending the matches alone, in a charged, arguably toxic atmosphere that he outwardly revels in, the pent-up, emotional torrent that the game releases in him seems of questionable benefit.

In some respects though, his autism diagnosis can't come quickly enough. If he struggles with relatability, his obscure choice of inspiring hero for this show generating exasperated routines about how he's failing to connect, Angelone nevertheless is great gas sending up his unfashionable white, male heterosexuality, as he plays up his ostracised, outsider comedian status. Wearing his renegade mantle with a knowing grin, if he's telling truth to power, Angelone is jabbing at the liberal orthodoxies of the Fringe and comedy industry, but entertainingly punching himself in the face rather than upwards or downwards.